Video of the Day: YACHT

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It’s a wistful statement from Young Americans Challenging High Technology (life is short; you have permission to call them YACHT). It’s a sentiment implicitly expressed by bands with names, like, We Were Promised Jetpacks. It’s a thought we’ve all probably had many times, and one that the LA-based band crystallizes in dance-able melancholy on the track “I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler.”

That crystallization is accompanied by a wonderfully minimalist video tracing an aesthetic thread from the famous, dark minimalist motif of classic Queen to the white space explosion of Apple commercials, all the while lampooning our self-absorption, technology and their intersection. Its yin and yang, its promising prologue, its expansive ideals…all reference the black and white pronouncements that often accompany prophetic declarations about the future. If you’ve seen a tech product unveiling, you know exactly what I mean. Everything WILL be this way….and then, well, it doesn’t ever quite live up to the utopian ideal that accompanied its conception, and it is replaced by the NEXT BIG THING before a year has peeled off the calendar.

The song is thus high art AND ear candy, traversing the rare intersection of high concept and pop pastiche. It touches upon Blondie’s legacy and Daft Punk’s precision, providing white earbuds everywhere with a spoon full of sugar to help the philosophical medicine go down.

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Behrnsie has a love for music that dare not speak its name. He attends many shows and can often be found counting out the beats for no discernible reason. He played alto saxophone in his middle school jazz band, where he was best known for infuriating his instructor when it was revealed that he played everything by ear, and could not in fact read music. He takes great pride that this is the same talent/affliction that got Tori Amos kicked out of the Peabody Academy. He does not live in his parents’ basement….except during the holidays.